i wish you the best of luck. >> thank you very much. >> you're welcome. have a good life. >> okay. >> that's bull[bleep] if you ask me. i saw it. i was here. i had to dedicate my personal [bleep] time for this, as well, i saw it. i was here. i had to dedicate my personal [ bleep ] time for this as well, so -- >> honestly, it's going to go to my debt either way, so it's going to help pay it off and that's it. >> when i came on the show, i wanted help managing my money, i wanted to learn how to save, i wanted to learn how to pay off my debt. and i feel like this whole process has taught me how to do that. >> ♪ i can tell, i can tell ♪ she loves to go >> ♪ shop >> ♪ she's all out of control ♪ she can't >> ♪ stop >> ♪ designer clothes, jewels, hair ♪ ♪ she's throwing money everywhere ♪ ♪ my head is spinning ♪ head is spinning ♪ oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ she's a princess ♪ she's a princess

♪ she's a princess ♪ she's a princess ♪ modern-day princess hi, everybody, welcome to "on the money," i'm maria bartiromo. the president makes a personal decision. why there is controversy over his choice for treasury secretary. and another washington battle could loom. and the cost of higher educati education. and how one ivy league institution is fighting. my conversation with the president of harvard. and what's the buzz? the buzz feed that is. the company that wants to be the next media giant and how it plans on getting there. "on the money" begins right now. this is america's number-one financial news program. "on the money." now, maria bartiromo. here's a look what's making news as we head into a new week kwgsz on the money" a changing of the guard at the most important post in the obama administration. the president nominated his chief of staff, jack lew to,

replace timothy geithner. lew has been the budget director for both presidentses clinton and obama. he is viewed as a experienced and hand in negotiations but does not have strong ties to wall street. it is likely he will be confirmed by the senate. the dow jones industrial average continued to rise on earnings news through the week. the s&p 500, in fact, closed at a new five-year high thursday. earnings season is under way, and dow component alcoa kicked off. profits in line at alcoa, while revenues were better than analysts expected. financial giant, wells fargo, beat expectations, as did american express. apple is said to be considering a cheaper version of the iphone. the iphone 5 costs about $200 with a contract with a wireless carrier. the less expensive version would have a plastic body. the debt ceiling, the new treasury secretary, so will washington be an obstacle to the markets and the economy, or will washington actually be a help? joining me now, greg ip, u.s.

economists editor of "the economist" and author of "the little book of economists" and jerry webman. gentlemen, good to see you. thank you so much for spending the time. >> hi, maria. >> president obama's pick for treasury secretary we learned officially this week. his chief of staff, jack lew, will take over for timothy geithner. is this a missed opportunity to be friendly to business, the business community, or is this a good call, since it appears nobody on earth knows the budget better than mr. lew? >> well, i think wall street and the business community would indeed have liked somebody who was perhaps of their own ranks. somebody like a jamie dymond or larry fink, who could build bridges between the business community, which feels a little bit alienated by the administration's first-term policies. and mr. obama. but what they got was a guy who, while not one of them -- at least does know the budget really well, and clearly the main challenge on the economic front for the -- first year is going to be on the fiscal front.

so insofar as jack lew has the trust of the president has in power to make deals, i would say that's a positive. but you have to keep in mind, he's not exactly the most trusted or liked person among republicans on capitol hill so that make make deal making a little rougher. >> jerry, what about all these issues in washington, the debt ceiling fight on the horizon. is this going to impact the broad economy and the earnings season, do you think? >> i guess this whole political thing is -- these are all the bricks in the wall of worry that equity markets are continuing to climb. i think there's -- you know, we know how to talk about these things, they're out there, they're visible, they're in the media a lot. you know, we follow them i think sometimes like a sport. and so maybe we exaggerate a little bit how much the -- these political match nations -- i don't know i don't want to minimize them, but i think sometimes we miss the point there are really good companies out there who figured out how to make really good money with all this political noise going on.

>> and yet, greg, so many potholes ahead. you know we're going to see a lot of back and forth over raising the debt ceiling. sequestration is still on the horizon now. less than two months away. the continuing resolution. i want you to take a listen to the president's spokesperson this week on the debt ceiling, get your reaction to that. >> sure. >> he will not negotiate with congress when it comes to the essential responsibility of congress to pay the bills that congress has incurred. >> what do you think? >> well, it's an interesting question. how does he not negotiate with congress, if congress won't raise it, if it the president doesn't do something like cut spending? so it's kind of an awkward sort of situation. and i think the troubling aspect for the markets, you basically have two immovable objects here. republicans who say we won't raise the debt ceiling if you don't cut spending and a president who says, first of all, i'm not going to cut spending unless you also raise taxes and i'm not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling. i think if past is prologue, i

don't think the markets or the private sector for that matter is going to pay attention to this until the last minute, the first few weeks of february. >> do you think we'll see spending cuts, and by the way, do you think we'll see even higher taxes, greg? >> i think we will, but i don't think we'll see it in the form of the grand bargain. i think that phrase and method of doing deals is dead. it just doesn't work. the president believes that the speaker of the house of representatives, john boehner, he just can't deliver. republicans, there's a deep last of trust with respect to the administration. my expectation is you're going to see a lot of muddle through this year. you might see, for example, the debt ceiling raised in little one-month increments. you might see very short-term spending resolutions. i think we're going to have to get used to essentially this pervasive patchwork and lack of certainty. >> jerry, i don't know how good that is. listen to what greg is saying. month by month, we're going to be dealing with these important issues. does this mean that business and consumers are going to be in the lockdown mode because we don't

know what's ahead? >> i don't think so, maria. what greg has just described is when i went to graduate school and political science 40 years ago, that's how america makes policy. it's called incrementalism. even look at this deal at the end of last year, which absolutely nobody loves and it's the farthest thing from a grand bargain. on the other hand, it takes a few billion dollars out of long-term debt. it's not enough, but we'll come up with some other deals and it's nonsense for the president's spokesmen to say he's not going to compromise. that doesn't mean anything. we're going to see more of this in bits and pieces. and as you both said, the markets in business continue to move along, look for ways to make money, look for opportunities, and i think that's going to continue to be the story. don't wait for clarity. act on where there's money to be made now. >> i like, greg, what you wrote in an article for "the economist" recently. markets now live in the policy equivalent of beirut in 1982. what did you mean by that? >> i guess what i'm trying to say is that essentially we have the fiscal equivalent of civil

war going on all the time here in washington. people in beirut eventually got used to the perpetual violence going on. and that's the point jerry and i are making here. both the private sector and markets are used to this perpetual bringingmanship. and there will be a lot more focus in what's happening in the real economy and what the med might do, than what's going on on the fiscal front. >> jerry, you're saying look for opportunities to make money. how do you do it and how would you characterize the fourth quarter earnings season so far? >> so far, so good. late last week, we heard good numbers from wells fargo, the market didn't like the forward look very much. but basically the numbers early on were encouraging. of course, that's because we marked down expectations so sharply. so i think people need to look globally. they need to look at the story that we've heard again, seems to be bubbling back up again about the consumer, the new middle class consumer and some emerging

markets. china. the idea that china was going to have a hard landing, to me was always just complete nonsense and misunderstanding of how that economic system was working. and, look, the housing story in the u.s. is moving along. yeah, the payroll tax really matters. but, in fact, if you look at how much the average homeowner who has been able to refinance, and that's more and more of them, have saved, it dwarfs what the increase is in the payroll tax. >> all right. we will leave it there. great conversation, guys. we appreciate your time tonight. see you soon. greg ip, jerry webman. up next "on the money," what today's students think of tomorrow's economy and how we can teach ourselves into the future. the president of harvard university is with me. and then is buzz worth billions? how to build a news company in a digital age. why sharing angry cat pictures may just save journalism.

welcome back. as college education's high cost

continues to rise, some families are forced to opt out for financial reasons. how does that impact business on campus? joining me right now is drew faust, the first female president of harvard university. president faust, good to have you on the program. >> thank you. great to be here. >> so we had news this week from moody's investor service that demand for four-year college degrees is going down. it is softening, leading to declines in net revenue for many universities. i realize harvard is in a unique position. tell me what you see broadly speaking out there in terms of the demand, in terms of the numbers of students coming into four-year colleges and even higher education. >> well, harvard does still have this very high level of demand, and our applications are up again this year for the college. but you're right. on a broader nationwide basis, we're seeing a softening in that demand, as moody's just reported. and i think this is something the country should be worried about. because we're in a moment in human history where knowledge is

ever more important as a foundation for economic growth, for social mobility, for building the kind of society and nation that we want to be. and so we have to make sure that access to higher education remains open to individuals who can benefit from it and make contributions to our country and to the world. we at harvard have worked very hard to make access open to students of talent. and i think part of the reason for our high numbers of applications is our very generous financial aid policy. which has been revolutionized in the past decade. so that 60% of our students are on financial aid. we ask no family contribution for families that make less than $65,000 a year. and we want that to deliver a message that if you are a person of talent and aspiration, you should think about coming to harvard. >> what is your take on online. i know harvard and m.i.t. joined

forces for offering online courses. what are your expectations? 200,000 people have signed up? >> well, we had 200,000 -- just for the first two courses, yes. >> that's a big number. >> very exciting. >> so what are your expectations here? >> well, our expectations here are that digital opportunities are going to transform what higher education can be in a variety of ways. they're going to make our knowledge available much more broadly. we had many thousands of these individuals who signed up, about 70% of them, in fact, were from outside the united states. so this made harvard ideas, harvard teaching available around the world. but we also want to use these experiments with online education to help us understand what we might do better in our own classrooms, here in the united states and here at harvard in particular. we want to see, are there ways we can bend the cost curve using some digital elements in higher education? are there new ways of teaching that enable more active learning

on the part of students? how do we use the face-to-face in different ways when we also have the digital available? so this is an experiment in transformation, what we believe will be a transformation of higher education in its accessibility but also in how it is undertaken in face-to-face interactions, as well. >> what about students? what are you hearing from students today? where are the jobs, where do they want to work? what are their hopes and dreams once they leave harvard? >> well, there is a very interesting poll that was taken by our undergraduate newspaper at the end of the academic year last year, asking students about to graduate what most of them were doing, and what they would wish they were doing. and the job mentioned of those going into the work force -- some are going off to graduate school and law school and medical school. but those going into the work force, the job most identified as the one they were going to

pursue in the immediate term was something in financial services or consulting. but when students were asked what they wished they were going to do, the highest answer was a career in the arts. and i find that so interesting. i think it bespeaks the spirit of creativity, of innovation that we see in the arts, in engineering, which has grown dramatically at harvard. the students who wanted to go in the arts, haven't quite figured out how to do it, but i think there is a drive for that, and i find that intriguing. >> i want to ask you one more question, because i know you're a civil war scholar. what do you make of the attention of steven spielberg's film "lincoln" has been getting. obviously, we're in a political season and ahead of the award season? >> well, i think it's a wonderful film, and i was delighted to see all the nominations announced for it. i think the film does many things, but one thing it says to me is, what an appetite there is and how broad an appetite there is for serious ideas and for

thought and for history which, of course, is very dear to me. i think it's also a film in which we project our current concerns on to the past. and we ask questions about what does leadership mean, how does our government work, what does it take to move the nation in a direction that's a positive direction, and how do ideals interact with practicalalities? and there are some wonderful messages in that film about that. >> fascinating. great film. president faust, good to have you on the program. >> thank you so much. >> drew faust joining us. up next "on the money" was president obama re-elected because he won the internet? a news site says that's part of the reason. as we take a break, look at how the stock market ended the week. back in a moment. living with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis

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each and every year, the hottest handheld devices, tablets and tvs are introduced at the consumer electronics show in vegas, an events long thought of as the super bowl of new technology. but my next guests say that may not be relevant to the way technology is actually being used today. from virtual content website, buzzfeed, ceo jonah peretti and editor in chief ben smith. thank you so much for joining us. great to see you. so your headline on this was, why we're not at the biggest

tech show in the world. even though jonah actually, there were pictures of you there. >> it was about the editorials. >> the editorial wasn't there. so tell me about this. how has the technology landscape changed, and how buzzfeed fits into that. >> right, both in our coverage and in the shape of the landscape, basically what's happened is people care less and less about the box or the gadget on which they're looking at content and more and more about what's in there, and particularly about the apps and social platforms. >> so jonah, you announced last week another $19 million in financing. 40 million unique visitors to the site a month. that's great numbers. as a media company, what are you trying to build? tell us what your vision is. >> we're focused on building a media brooand for the social ag. so for us, we think that when people think content is interesting enough to share with their friends, that's a much higher bar than a click or a slide show view. we want people to find the best

stuff they think is worthy of sharing with their friends on twitter, facebook, social web. >> and a lot of the virtual content on buzzfeed, ben, is things like cat pictures, top ten lists, talk to us about what gets eyeballs to the site. how do you balance the sort of goofier content in some regard with the real journalism, breaking news and more serious content? >> i think most people like both. and i think there's been a resistance in traditional news organizations of jamming them up next to each other. of having cute cats right next to we broke the news on the departure of the secretary of labor, say. and i think the thing that's changed, if you're spending your life on twitter or spending your time on facebook, as a consumer, you're totally accustomed to those things being jammed together with ridiculous pictures of your friends and the whole idea this has to be kept separate somehow isn't the experience of news anymore. >> what about your news diet? what is that? how do you consume information?

what do you look at? >> i really get my news from twitter. i wake up in the morning -- >> you do? >> that's what i'm scrolling through, for sure. and when jonah convinced me to come to buzzfeed, this seems crazy but the social web is where i consume my news and i want to spread it. >> and the set of people 25 or under, 35 years old and under are twice as likely to get their news from these kinds of outlets, social media. what about trusting this information? the argument, how do i know this stuff is actually accurate and doesn't have the weight and strength of a traditional broadcaster behind them? >> yeah. i think that people are brought more into the process of how the truth is worked out or discovered. so you'll see a news story break, and there will be information on twitter that's not accurate. and then immediately it gets corrected by people saying no, i'm -- you know, i have another source and i found this and that. and everyone swarms to try to figure out the truth. which sometimes is confusing for

the public, because there's one or two tweets that get retweeted a lot that are wrong. and then there is a flood of correction that comes down. and the public actually sees that all unfold and doesn't just wait until the evening news. >> so jonah, you're getting into the e book publishing business, as well? michael hastings' book about the presidential 2012 campaign coming out this week. talk to us about that. any revolutions aside from the president using the digit full tal world as well as he does. >> really, opportunistic in that michael hayes was covering the campaign for us and doing amazing work and having an incredible romp. we discovered reading the book that we may have paid for him to drink out of mini bars and, you know -- or not just destroy mini bars in like five different hotels on the campaign trail, which, you know, was entertaining reading. >> good story. >> and because these information-based industries like publishing, like

entertainment the, news are increasingly moving online and becoming social, it felt like a great first step to say let's take a book from one of our writers doing great work and release it online and promote the book in a way that works for the social web and for the readers that are reading on their kin dells and ipads. >> thank you so much. buzzfeed, we love it and appreciate you joining us today. ben smith and jonah peretti. up next, a look at the news this upcoming week. and a pasta dish that will take a bite out of your wallet. further proof, there is no free lunch. you. try pepto-bismol to-go, it's the power of pepto, but it fits in your pocket. now tell the world daniel... of pepto-bismol to-go.

here's a look at the stories coming up in the week ahead that may move the markets and impact your money this upcoming week. earnings reports are out, jpmorgan chase, bank of america, goldman saks and sit i. tuesday, what's on your mind, facebook? the social networking site, sent invitations to a mysterious public event, rumored to be a new product announcement. also on tuesday, we will get december's total retail sales numbers. that includes the holiday shopping season, as well as inflation reports, the indicator for the producer price index will be out. on wednesday, the consumer price index follows the ppi. finally today, check, please. manhattan's bichet restaurant is

selling a plate of pasta that sells for, get this, $2,013 for a plate of pasta. it's topped with fresh lobster and black truffle shavings, and diners can take home the gold-leafed plate designed by none other than johnnie versace. talk about a lux lunch. that will do it for us today. my guest next week, whole foods founder john macke. keep it right here where we are, "on the money." have a great weekend, everybody. i'll see you next weekend.